The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Béchamel Sauce

 

 

 

As promised, here's a recipe for the classic Béchamel Sauce. In England it's known as a "White Sauce".

 

According to the Larousse Gastronomique, the sauce is named after the "Marquis de Béchamel, Marquis de Nointel (1630–1703), a financier who held the honorary post of Chief Steward to Louis XIV.  Béchamel is an improvement upon a similar, earlier sauce, the Tuscan "salsa colla", imported from Italy to France by Catherine de' Medici.  It first appeared in "Le Cuisinier François", published in 1651 by François Pierre La Varenne (1615–1678), chef de cuisine to Nicolas Chalon du Blé, Marquis d'Uxelles.

The Escoffier method is considered to be definitive: make a white flour butter roux from equal parts of unsalted butter and flour, i.e. melt a big knob of unsalted butter in a hot small pan, and stir in an equal measure of flour. Next, gradually whisk in hot milk. As the flour cooks, it will form a smooth sauce. Season with sea salt, add an onion studded with a clove, and cook for eighteen minutes.

Hollandaise Sauce

 

 

 

I'm sure you all know how to make Hollandaise Sauce. You'll need it to make Omelette Arnold Bennett.  If you've forgotten, here's how: Melt 225g (8oz) of butter in a pan. In the meantime, liquidize two egg yolks with the juice of one lemon and season with white pepper. When the butter is hot, turn the liquidizer on full blast, and slowly pour in the butter.

That's it. Make sure it's served hot, and that it doesn't get too thick. Nothing worse than luke-warm and gloopy Hollandaise Sauce. And it's perfect, of course, with English Asparagus- not long to wait now..

Omelette Arnold Bennett

 

 

 

Hands up who saw that Sophie Dahl cookery television programme the other day?  Now, I'm an avid follower of Roald (who's Harry Potter?) and his extended family; and since the age of six I've been a huge fan of anything and everything Dahl-esque: transatlantic peaches, Gypsy caravans, Patricia Neal's cheekbones, chocolate factories, Quentin Blake's illustrations, and All Things Unexpected. 

In the programme, the delicious Miss Dahl (hang on, shouldn't she be the delicious Mrs Cullum?) rustled up a few bits and bobs in a retro-looking kitchen, and let us into a few charmingly girly secrets. And that was about it. Nothing more. Safe television, bland.

She looks great (amazingly like her grandmother) and her food looks good, but crikey o' reilly, I look back on the enthusiasm of the early Keith Floyd or the ravings of a certain Mrs Cradock with genuine nostalgia, and for the days when old pros like Anton Mosimann or Albert Roux stood in some boring, brightly-lit studio somewhere, with a set of sparkling saucepans and a brand new gas stove and just showed us how it was done properly.

The girl likes cooking, I have no doubt about that, but I don't detect a genuine obsession for food there- she's the star and the food is almost incidental. And I doubt it's her fault. I can just see it. Some thrusting young television exec takes her out to lunch at Sketch, or somewhere like that, and there's lots of exciting talk: "The New Nigella"..."You'll be huge, darling" (as if she already isn't- or wasn't)..."massive book sales", and so on, and so on. And who can blame her for taking the bait?  I would. You would. My Cat would.

The trouble is that, currently, the British Broadcasting Corporation is one gigantic yawn when it comes to food. And I have a solution: may I suggest that the BBC clears all its food programmes off the schedules for a year (bit of a problem there, I admit, as this accounts for nearly all their programming, and I can see a queue at the Shepherds Bush unemployment office of hairy bikers, voluptious Belgravia housewives, fat ladies, bald masterchefs, and pock-marked prima donnas), and then after, say, a year of food abstinence, commissions one new food programme of intelligence, content, integrity and dare I say it, quirkiness?  And one programme only.

There. I've had my little rant.  And I've gone off on a tangent too, as this post was supposed to be about Omelette Arnold Bennett, which the supermodel showed us how to cook. It was an inspired choice, as Omelette Arnold Bennett is delicious, and thinking about it, I'm amazed that I haven't covered it before. It's very much a Greasy Spoon type dish. Here's how I make it (this will make two omelettes) and you'll need to make up some Béchamel and Hollandaise sauce before hand.  If I haven't written about these two sauces before, by golly, I'm just about to over the next few posts.

Poach 150g skinned haddock fillets in a mixture of milk and water. I would recommend using undyed haddock, rather than the yellow dyed stuff.

A fool proof cooking method is as follows: put the fish into cold water, bring it to the boil, put on the saucepan lid, and then turn off the heat. The fish will sit in the hot water and cook slowly, to taste. When you're happy with it, take the haddock out of the pan, drain and flake up the fish. I like my fish to be very slightly under-done. 

Whisk up six eggs, add half the flaked haddock and season to taste. Heat an omelette pan, add a knob of butter and swirl it around. Add enough egg mixture to cover the pan, and stir immediately, tipping the pan quickly, to allow the runny egg mixture to fill the gaps. Work like a navvie, without pause. Knowing how to make an omelette is an art, something you will need to practise. Mrs Aitch is extremely good at it; I am not. Once the omelette has lightly set, slide it out on to a plate.

Mix a cup of Béchamel Sauce with three tablespoons of Hollandaise Sauce. Add the remaining smoked haddock flakes and fold in a largish tablespoon of whipped double cream. Cover the omelette with this mixture, sprinkle with some freshly grated Parmesan Cheese and bake under a hot grill until glazed.

And who was Arnold Bennett?  It's amusing how celebrity and transience go together like tea and biscuits or Jekyll and Hyde. Back in the 1920's Bennett was a famous man of letters, and a director of The Savoy Hotel to boot; where the famed omelette was invented for him.  As Andy Warhol said: "in the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes".

 

Scrambled Eggs Revisited

 

 

 

We had the usual lazy Sunday: lots of lounging around on sofas; newspapers sprawled all over the floor, Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" on the television- that sort of thing. There was a short article in one of the colour supplements (was it "The Sunday Times", or even the dreaded "Stella"?) about scrambled eggs. Which set me thinking: what is the best way to make the perfect scrambled eggs?

Back in the 80's, I had an interesting plate of scrambled eggs at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. This was a breakfast affair- we had all been to some charity ball at the Dorchester, and drifted in to the Hilton at seven o' clock in the morning, feeling shattered. The scrambled eggs were bright yellow in colour. And I really mean bright yellow.

Now I'm sure that The Hilton use some sort of rare organic hen's egg (the shell no doubt mottled in a delicate Eton Blue); and I would hate to imply that their chefs took short cuts in any shape or form (this was the 1980's after all); but I have to state that the long finger of suspicion pointed to the remote possibility that they had used yellow food dye in the cooking process. Quelle Horreur.

 

Up until now, I've made scrambled eggs in the Escoffier tradition, and I wrote about this on The Greasy Spoon a year or two back:

"Break eight good eggs into a mixing bowl. Blend them very very gently with a fork. You do not want to beat them. You do not add water or milk. That's what Irish cooks did in the 1950's. You don't want to add salt at this stage, either, as it makes the eggs watery.  Not good.

I think it was the restauranteur, Marcel Boulestin, who suggested that Escoffier also rubbed garlic onto his fork to add a bit of flavour to the eggs. I'll have to check up on that one- I may be wrong.

Anyway, heat up a small copper pan. Add a knob of unsalted butter. Pour in the eggs, crank down the heat, and start to cook them at an extremely low temperature. In a professional kitchen they would probably use a "bain-marie". That means placing the smaller pan over a larger pan full of simmering boiling water.

As I've got a job of sorts to hold down, and have limited time, I don't do this; but I can only stress that for it to work, you need to set your heat to the lowest possible setting. Stir slowly with a wooden spoon from the middle, so that the egg sets in creamy curds.

This is a real art. You don't want the egg to stick to the pan, yet at the same time, you want the egg to set. When the eggs are almost ready, stir in some cream. Quickly remove the eggs from the heat. They will carry on cooking in the pan. Now you can stir in some more butter to taste, and season with salt, pepper, and if you're in the mood, chopped chives."

But we can improve on this. Elizabeth David came up with a brainwave. She deleted an egg white. So if you're using say, four eggs- use four egg yolks but only three egg whites. This will make your scrambled eggs yellow. No need for food dye. And that's how you make the Perfect Scrambled Egg.

 

Aloo Gobi

 

 

 

I've currently got this thing about caulifower; in truth, it's developing into a bizarre craving. I'm not sure what it is exactly that I like about cauliflower. Is it the slightly peppery, mustardy flavour? Or the crunchiness of the stuff when it's slightly undercooked?

Aloo Gobi is the dish of the moment- potato is the aloo bit, and caulifower the gobi. It's a dry curry from Northern India, and easy to make; or at least, I thought it was until I tried using the recipe from Manju Malhi's otherwise excellent book, "Brit Spice".  

 

 

I think I like this book: it's well laid out using decent, clear typography, has excellent photographs, and the cover shows a wholesome looking girl (presumably the author) chopping up some coriander. The blurb on the front cover (courtesy of The Guardian) says "Manju Malhi is being billed as the Next Madhur Jaffrey".

I followed Ms Malhi's instructions to the letter: tip half a teaspoon of cumin seeds into three tablespoons of olive oil or vegetable oil and fry for a few seconds. So far, so good. Next, you add a chopped onion, a peeled and diced potato and a chopped and seeded green chili and fry for five minutes, before adding 200g (7oz) of caulifower florets and stir-frying for a further thirty seconds.

Turmeric, coriander and salt are stirred in, and the dish is covered and cooked on a low heat for five minutes. Chopped tomato is folded in, and the aloo gobi is cooked, covered, for a further three minutes.

And the result?  Delicious flavours, but both the potatoes and cauliflower remained severely undercooked. I realise "Brit Spice" is meant to be about modern, fast Indian cookery with a British twist: busy lives and all that; but this is taking fast food to extremes. Also, the cauliflower florets were too large, but that was my fault. I'm fine with the idea of keeping the caulifower crunchy, but undercooked potato ain't a good idea.

Sometimes I wonder if editors actually test the recipes they publish? I have a sneaky feeling that we could be looking at a typo here and the potato, onions and chili should be cooked for fifteen minutes at the start, and not five minutes, as published. The cooking time for the cauliflower could probably be increased by a further five minutes, too.

But it's an interesting question. How many recipes out there from well-known cookery writers are actually just plain wrong?  I seem to remember reading about the famous case of Robert Carrier and his Chili Con Carne, when because of some misprint, thousands of eager cooks across the land spooned in five tablespoons of hot chili powder rather than four teaspoons, or whatever it was supposed to be. And this was in 1965 (or whenever it was), a time when most Britons thought garlic was the mark of The Beast. 

Stangely, curry might now almost considered to be The National Dish.

Vichy Onions

 

 

 

If you're looking for a side dish that's slightly different, this is the perfect recipe. It's similar in style to "Vichy Carrots", which are glazed baby carrots cooked in a bit of sugar and mineral water from the Vichy area of France.

Buy or dig up some baby onions. You could also use shallots, but I think the baby onions will hold their shape better. In a small pan, saute them very slowly in butter for a minute or so.

Next, add some meat stock, salt and pepper, and two teaspoons of sugar. The idea is to braise the onions, so you want your stock to come only half-way up the onions. If you're going to add the fizzy water, now's the time to do it, but I'm not entirely convinced that anyone (unless they have super developed taste buds) is going to be able to tell the difference here between using tap water or Vichy water.  After all, there's quite of bit of other stuff going on in there, the sugar, the salty stock, not to mention the onions themselves. Dunno.

Cook gently, so that the stock combines with the sugar and butter, and forms a syrup. Make sure that the onions are well coated; and carry on cooking until the stock/syrup has been reduced. You're looking for nicely caramelised onions. If the heat is too high, they may burn, so watch out for this.

Marinated Haddock with Prawns, Dill and Spring Onions

 

 

 

This recipe comes from Nathalie Hambro's "Simple Fare" (1986), one of the more interesting cook books in my collection. As well as being a fashion designer, and an all-round style guru, Nathalie Hambro is one of the most innovative and inspiring cookery writers out there, and if you are looking for fresh ideas I whole-heartedly recommend her books. Most of them, I think, are out of print but can be bought easily from amazon.co.uk, or abebooks.co.uk. I like this recipe for its Baltic, or Nordic, overtones, and it's very easily made with the simplest of ingredients. In concept, it's very similar to Gravlax.

 

 

 

Line a dish with tin foil. Spread some fresh dill over the foil, and season with sugar, Maldon salt, and black pepper. Next, place a fresh smoked haddock fillet over the dill. Normally I would use undyed haddock, but for this recipe I've found that the dyed yellow haddock works better. The Haddock needs to be as fresh as you can get it.

Cover the fish with more dill, sugar, sea salt and pepper. It's best to use more sugar than salt, and to go easy with the pepper. Sprinkle some large peeled prawns on top. Wrap the whole thing up tightly with the tin foil, and stick it into the 'fridge, with a weight on top, for at least twenty four hours- preferably longer.

When it's ready, slice the haddock into long, thin pieces. It's a bit like Japanese sushumi. Arrange in a serving dish with the prawns. 

Finally, take some spring onions, and cut them in four lengthways. Soak them in a bowl of ice-cold water- after a few minutes the green tops will start to curl up; this looks impressive. Zero effort. Take them out, drain them; and stick them in with the marinated haddock and the rest of the prawns.